Groundwater monitoring wells have been installed at tens of thousands of sites across the United States and the world to monitor groundwater contaminant plumes. Once installed, these monitoring wells are typically subjected to years or decades of monitoring at pre-defined sampling intervals (e.g., quarterly, semi-annually, annually, or other determined frequency or schedule). Over time, as a groundwater plume is cleaned-up, or if the extent of the contamination is assessed to be reducing, it may no longer be necessary to continue monitoring at past sampling intervals or sampling extent.
Tremendous cost savings can be recognized, for example, by reducing the number of wells sampled and/or by reducing the frequency of sampling and/or the number of constituents being analyzed. This is especially the case where it is determined that the groundwater plume is stable (i.e., not moving) or decreasing in size and/or concentration and/or mass.
Certain practices, by environmental professionals, to modify the monitoring well network and/or sampling frequency (these combined are referred to herein as a “monitoring well system”) often rely on the subjective professional judgement of the environmental professionals, which often varies among professionals based on their respective experience and education. Because different practitioners can have different experiences with the assessment of a monitoring well system, they can come up with different opinions for the same set of data and measurements.
In addition, opinions on a monitoring well system provided by environmental professionals are often subjected to challenges by environmental regulators. Because of a lack of an established benchmark to determine when a well can be removed from a monitoring network or when a well can be sampled less often, the final decision on modifying a monitoring well system may be non-empirically based. For example, it may be determined based on the personalities or on environmental professional who makes the strongest assertions.
One class of programs (such as MAROS “Monitoring and Remediation Optimization System”) are used to assist the environmental professional and the regulator in making this decision. However, these programs are often limited in the presentation of information in a manner that can be readily used by environmental professional or to support a given assessment position.
What are needed are devices, systems and methods that overcome challenges in the present art, some of which are described above.